RIP: Hip Hop

ABOVE: The late Tupac Shakur

I'm feeling a little nostalgic right now, because I recently saw Flavor Flav on a reality show performing his modern-day mistrel show, and I'm disgusted.

It took me a while, but I have reached the point at which I no longer want to be called a fan of rap music. Nobody knows what that is anymore.

It wasn't always this bad, kids. I promise. Rap music was great once upon a time. It was the new punk rock -- the anti-establishment, in-your-face voice of a generation. And rappers had talent. Real talent. They could write. And they cared.

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"There's gonna be a lotta slow singin' and flower bringin' if my burgular alarm starts ringin'" -- Notorious B.I.G. (Ready to Die, 1993)

"I wanted an album so rugged nobody could touch it
Spent a million a track and went over my budget
How the f--k am I supposed to get outta debt
I can't rap anymore
I just murdered the alphabet" -- Eminem (The Slim Shady LP, 1997)

"I could see you comin home after work late
You're in the kitchen tryin to fix us a hot plate
Ya just workin with the scraps you was given
And mama made miracles every Thanksgivin'" -- Tupac Shakur (Me Against the World, 1995)
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But nobody writes like this anymore. Biggie and Tupac are dead. Jay-Z and Eminem retired (sort of). The Wu Tang Clan has always been fantastic, but nobody listens. Ludacris is funny but has no substance. Ice Cube is acting in Christmas movies and Dr. Dre hasn't released an album since 1999. It's like the NBA in that weird, post-MJ, Bird, Magic period.

People actually think Chamillionaire, a guy whose best song is called "Ridin' Dirty" and includes the line "When they realize I ain't even ridin dirty bet you'll be leavin' with an even madder mood/You can't arrest me plus you can't sue/This a message to the law tellin' 'em we hate you," is a good rapper. Lil John is a member in good standing of the hip hop community.

Eminem sparked the genre with his first album and appeared to be saving it with his second one (The Marshall Mathers LP, which has an argument for greatest rap album ever). From 1997-2003, nobody could touch Eminem. Nobody. It was a crazy period in the world -- the best rapper on earth was white, the best golfer was black. But Eminem (and Tiger Woods, for that matter) was such a singular figure -- a pissed off white kid who could really rap hooks up with Dr. Dre and starts writing about killing his wife -- that nobody could even catch his coattails. By 2004, he had lost whatever it was that made him great.

Now we have Kevin Federline.

I now know what Led Zeppelin and Kiss fans must have felt when Def Leppard started selling platinum records. To quote the immortal Dane Cook, "What in holy hell is happening here?"

Saying you're a rap fan in 2006 means you like "crunk" music, which is more or less rhythmic yelling. Imagine Will Ferrell in the "I drive a Dodge Stratus!" sketch, dropped over a drum beat and staccato clapping sounds. It means you think 50 Cent is the best rapper of his generation, and the awful thing is that it might be true.

So I'm done with rap. I'm holding on to my Biggie and Tupac albums and I'm still keeping Dre and Eminem in the rotation, but I need a new style of music to like, something that has some substance, some grit, some soul, some creativity and something that hasn't devolved into self parody.

Suggestions are welcome. In fact, if anybody has a suggestion, I promise to listen to it and write a blog about it.

Porn or Cross Country

I watched high school kids run cross country yesterday, meaning I now know what is meant by "cruel and unusual punishment." I grasp "objectification."

Pornography isn't this demeaning.

Let me set this up for those who haven't witnessed what amounts to a glorified hog show. Runners enter the facilities and immediately become nameless. Caroline from Shawnee Heights became 436. Joe from Washburn Rural became 481. Numbers. I think Stalin came up with this idea.

Then 436 and 481 line up with a whole buch of 436s and 481s, someone shoots a gun and they take off running with little regard for human life. It is very much like Wal-Mart on the day after Thanksgiving, only it goes on for, like, 36 miles. And not on a track, where at least times would be consistent and the chance of blowing out a knee in a mole hill would be mostly eliminated. It's out in the middle of some guy's pasture.A And it's about 45 degrees. And people who are consuming donuts and coffee stand along all the curves yelling at you to run harder.

Eff that.

But that's not even the best part. It's the state cross country meet, so whether you're in first place or 40th, you're basically running on pure guts for the last 400 meters. And if you're like 20 percent of your opponents, when you cross the finish line you're going to fall down, vomit, or bend over with a look of agony only matched by that of a woman giving birth to, say, Shaquille O'Neal.

You're totally spent and all you want to do is finish the last leg of "ashes to ashes, dust to dust," but some overweight 52-year-old woman, energized by that Volvo-sized slab of coffee cake, is yelling at you to keep moving and to get the #$@! out of everybody's way.

So someone drags your ass through a long gate that looks like it spends its free time coralling unbroken horses. Said woman hands you a small piece of paper with a number on it indicating your place of finish.

Shooting from the Hip

Every now and then, you just need to spew some thoughts all over the room and not worry about cleaning them up. This is one of those times ...

-Professors, if you're going to lecture for 75 minutes, please give me some reason to believe you're telling me information I need to know. If I don't think I'll be tested over it, I'm checking out mentally for the entire period and you might as well be speaking to the chalk board, which, in some cases, you already are. And if you don't have anything worthwhile to tell me, just stop talking. Nobody will complain. I promise.

-- Hey, studious kid, when a professor is about to let us out of class early and asks if anybody has any questions, do not, under any circumstances, ask a question. You've just screwed the entire class.

-- Women in the locker room: It's still a little weird.

-- Dear Guy Sitting in the Airport Effing with Your Blackberry,
Even I think you're a douchebag.
Regards,
Kevin Federline

-- Kate on "Lost." That's all I'm saying.

-- Women have "He's Just Not That Into You." Men have "She Really Likes You And You're Pretty Much Exactly What She Wants, But There Is This Asshole Who Mistreats Her That She Erroneously Feels Like She Can Change, So She's Going To Choose Him And Complain To You About Him."

-- If Peyton Manning gets intercepted in a forrest, and nobody's around to see him throw his hands in the air and complain to the back judge, did it really happen?

-- I don't get "indie" music or the people who like it. Seems like an awful existence. You find a band you really like, you start buying their albums and talking about them. But because they make good music, they become popular and hit it big, and are now you have to say they sold out and act like you're too sophisticated for them. This seems painful.

-- $2.99. Yes, I am out of my mind. Thanks for asking. Now stop it.

-- Top 3 GPA-destroying devices of all time:
1. Beer
2. Video games
3. Fantasy football
Trust me. I would know.



Out.

Why Med School Doesn't Want Me

The guy next to me in the photo is a man named John Tanksley. He is a medical student and also my main man. We have known eachother since we were 10. He is the kind of guy whose appartment is completely color-matched. He cleans his bathroom every day. He makes his bed. He has bottles of wine and champagne laying around "just in case." He shaves his chest. He's kind of a metrosexual.
But that is all irrelevant to the topic at hand, which is this: I am completely ineligible for medical school.

This came about recently as I pondered this fact: John will finish medical school in 2007, make about $40,000 a year while in residency (3 years, I think), then start pulling $150,000-$300,000 a year.

By 2011, he will have earned something like $220,000. By 2011 (assuming a normal sportswriter's salary), I will have earned something like $120,000. By 2021, he will be in the $2.3 million career earnings range. I will be in the $450,000 career earnings range.

So I asked him, "Say, uh, John, say I decided to take a year and study like a fiend for the MCATs. What are the chances I could get into medical school?"
John: "What, you're thinking about med school?!"
Tully: "I'm just wondering."
John: "Mmmm. Not good."
Me: "What if I got a really good score?"
John: "Well, they look at lots of other factors like GPA, and extra-curriculars. Plus, you have to be able to show them things you've done that indicate compassion."
Me: "Oh. I'm pretty much compassionately bankrupt, and my GPA is horrendous."
John: "Yeah. I don't think anybody would accept you. Unless you were black or something."

So there went that. Not that I was really considering it. Med school sounds like a lot of really boring work, and a lot of detail and a lot of debt. I don't think I would make a good doctor. And I like the career I've chosen. But it would have been nice to know that I still had some options. Turns out, if I had wanted to go to medical school, I basically would have started preparing for that when I was about 16, which is what John did.

So that's kind of a bummer.

On the bright side, I see 300-pound men naked on a regular basis.

Bathroom Fouls

I just got out of the first floor men's room in Henderson, the one that was either a) originally a women's bathroom, b) built before the invention of urinals, or c) designed by someone unaware that men generally stand up to pee.

Anyway, I go in there for just that purpose and gag as I walk in. Some kid is in there dropping a hellacious deuce. This is the kind that you drop in your roommate's bathroom because you might need to use yours in the next 6 hours and because you enjoy seeing him suffer. This deuce would be considered vandalism in 19 states.

So then the guy does something I was totally unprepared for: He exits the stall before I leave the bathroom. I could be off here, but if people are coughing as you walk in, you don't want them to be able to attatch a face to the damage.

As a refresher, the basic men's room rules:
1. Never use a urinal directly next to another guy unless you have no other options. The farther away you can get, the better.
2. Newspapers are to be folded once and tucked in the space between the stall door and the wall. Do not leave with the paper. Do not place it on the ground. This usually gets it wet, thereby keeping anyone else from reading it.
3. If a deuce in on the loose, leave it in a remote bathroom with low traffic. Possible exception: If you have some kind of contest going on with your coworkers/classmates/roommates or you have a bone to pick with somebody.
4. No grunting, groaning or otherwise audibly letting your relief be known. Know that if you do this, everyone else in the room is entitled by law to mock and exaggerate your noises.
5. Flush. Twice if necessary.
6. No whistling. Maybe this was OK in 1952. Not now. There are appropriate times to whistle -- when looking at an engine or new paint job, at a woman in a skirt, at a basketball game -- while wizzing is not one of the acceptable times. It's creepy and makes everyone wonder what's making you so jolly.

Why Men Don't Buy Underwear

As one of two men in class, I feel there are certain things about my gender I should explain to the overwhelming majority in our class.
Maybe this is some form of civic duty. Maybe this is just me writing about underwear.

Let's move.

Anyone who is living has probably noticed that men tend to ride the same pair of boxers for years on end. Essentially, our only requirement for underwear is that it form a protective barrier between our zipper and our manhood.

Thus, we stick with our boxers until they can no longer serve this function, which usually means the underwear has disintegrated, become a part of the atmosphere and been carried away by a nitgogen molecule which, if it is a male nitrogen molecule, has given the boxers particle a quick sniff and put it on.

Women, of course, find this repulsive, which is the only reason men every buy new underwear. In fact, men would probably still be living in caves, walking around naked and communicating in well-timed scratches and gutteral noises if women did not demand a basic level of civility from us.

We go to dance clubs because girls go do dance clubs. We clean our bathrooms because girls like clean bathrooms. We buy fancy shirts with stripes and buttons because girls like fancy shirts with stripes and buttons.
(Incidentally, we buy pink polo shirts and pop the collars because we're homosexuals and other men like pink polo shirts with popped collars. But that is neither here nor there.)

I think, to varying degrees, women are aware of this phenomenon -- that we spend a great deal of effort solely to make ourselves presentable to women. This it seems would make for an empowering feeling, particularly for women being pursued by multiple potential suitors. On the other hand, I have no idea what it is like being constantly approached with bad pickup lines, offered free drinks and insincere compliments and asked for "dates," although, as a man, that sounds fantastic. I think that's what it's like being in a rock band, which explains why so many men, who would never touch a piano or a trumpet, want to play guitar.

If you're waiting for some profound point to come out of all this, you probably have not yet realized this blog is being generated by a mind barren of profundities.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some underwear shopping to do.

From Where Bitches Come

They appeared to be friends, these kids. Maybe they were related. There were five of them, black kids aged about 10-12, crossing 8th street in Topeka.

A girl, the portliest of the bunch, was on a bike while three of the others walked.
"Slow down, you fat bitch," came the holler from the short, skinny kid on foot.

The girl didn't even react.

Maybe by now, by 12 years old, she's been called a fat bitch so many times it doesn't even faze her. Maybe she's not really a bitch, either. Maybe she's a perfectly sweet girl who is also fat.

Doesn't matter. She's a bitch not because she's a bitch, but because she's fat. And maybe she hears this enough times she starts to believe it. And maybe when she's 16 or 20 or 35 she's finally given up trying to be nice, because it never mattered. She was always just a fat bitch. So that's what she's decided to become.

Maybe this is from where bitches come.

Hello, my name is Shithead. I hate my parents.

I'm not kidding. I mean, MY name isn't Shithead. My name is Tully, which may or may not be more bizarre than being named Shithead. But I just finished reading Freakonomics, a book in which an economist studies all manner of cultural things from a statistical, economical perspective.
I'm not going to give you a book review here (in short: pretty eye-opening data combined with middling writing), but I had to bring this up.

One of the things this guy studied was whether having a very black-sounding name has an effect on life success (his conclusion: people with black-sounding names are less successful than those without, but the names are merely a symptom of the reasons this is true, rather than the cause). In his research, he came across a little black girl named Shithead, pronouced shuh-TEED.

What name could possibly be worse than Shithead? Would Assclown be worse? Dumbbitch? I just don't know how you top that.

The more I type Shithead, the more preposterous it seems. Can you imagine the first day of every class that girl ever goes to?
"Ricky ... "
"Here."
"Rachel ..."
"Here."
"Shi ... um, is it ... Shhhhhhhhiiii ... I don't want to mess this up ... "
"It's Shuh-TEED"
"Ok (whiping brow in relief)."

If I was Shithead, I would make the guy say it every time. No way I'm bailing anybody out on that one.

And how soon after your 18th birthday are you at the courthouse changing that puppy? Do you camp outside the doorstep the night before? Do you have a celebratory bonfire to burn all recollections of Shithead?

Boggles the mind.

My Communication Problems

In my Coms class, we took a survey to determine our communication styles, the results of which indicated that my communication style most closely resembled that of sedementary stones.

I am not arguing that I am a poor communicator. My ex-girlfriend can attest to that. Then again, she is a smelly pirate hooker, so let's not listen to her. Anyway, my point is, I know a lot of people who would have scored really well on that survey who I would not describe as being good at communicating.

Take my ex-girlfriend, for example. She would have aced the opennness, friendliness and non-verbal portions of the survey. Of course, this is a person who once talked for 33 minutes into my phone as it rested on the seat next to me. All I had to to was pick up the phone about every 6 minutes and say "uh huh," then set it back down. Is flooding someone else with totally worthless and uninteresting information the trait of a good communicator? I think not.

One of my roommates would have scored incredibly well on the test as well, particularly the friendliness portion. He is also a pathological liar. If you have known this guy for longer than 6 months, you know this. So every time he opens his mouth, you're wondering what percentage of what he's saying will be true. Everything he says is undermined by himself.





Out.

The Frosh

My earlier post about spotting freshmen was born of my relationship to this kid I sit next to in Chem. 101. And let me just get this out there right away: I can't stand this kid. It's to the point that I dislike him so much, I actually look forward to coming to class, just to see what new thing I'll hate about him that day.
I'm actually taking notes on this guy. He's like a case study or something.

First of all, we're three weeks into class now, and have been sitting in the same spots every day. Yet every time I walk into class, his bag (which must weigh 35 pounds) is sitting on the floor in such a way that I cannot pull my chair out. Every day, it's this way, and he continues to place his bag in the same spot every time, wait for me to attempt to pull my chair out, then move his bag to the other side, which -- and this must be a light-bulb moment for him every time -- is on the aisle. And I'm not even going to theorize why he, or anybody, would show up more than 2 minutes early to a 9:30 class. That's a little more than my mind can handle at this point.

Here's a brief timeline (yes, I've been writing this stuff down):
Aug. 28 -- The professor brings up an article in the Capital-Journal. The Frosh goes, "more like the Crapital-Journal." Good one.
Aug. 28 -- The Frosh sends and receives no fewer than 14 text messages in a 10-minute span. May I remind everyone that it is 9:45 a.m.? Who is texting you at 9:45 a.m.? And why haven't you ended this relationship yet? SIDE NOTE: The Frosh uses both thumbs to type texts, and can do it without looking. This is a sick, sick human being.
Aug. 31 -- Discussing propane, the professor brings up Hank Hill. The Frosh chuckles at the mere mention of Hank Hill, adding "good show."
Sept. 7 -- To nobody in particular, but loud enough anyone in a four-desk radius could have heard him: "I gotta leave in about 5 minutes." Fantastic, dude. Glad we all know that. He ends up leaving for a "doctor's appointment" 20 minutes into the 1:20 class period. Evidently, he still hasn't realized that this professor hasn't taken attendance since the first day of class. Before leaving, he drops this on me:
"Do you take good notes."
"Occasionally."
"Can I get the notes from you next class?"
"Yeah."
Evidently, Einstein here also has not realized that the professor's lectures are basically word-for-word passages from the text book. And if you think I'm NOT taking this kid on a wild goose chase with my notes, you don't know me very well. There will be so much extraneous information in there, he'll think he's reading a Chuck Klosterman book.

Ok, I'm done now. I feel better.

How to spot a freshman

This time of year, I find that it is particularly easy to determine who on campus in a freshman. Of course, there is no redeeming value in being able to do this, which explains why I have taken an interest in it. Virtually everything I know is totally useless information. I digress.
The Top 3 ways to spot a freshman:
1. Self-conscious facial expression -- Freshmen always look like they're unsure of themselves, like they're worried they wore the wrong shirt and everybody is whispering about it behind their backs. Plus, a freshman may or may not know where he is going at any given time.
2. The extra 5 minutes in front of the mirror -- This shows up more dramatically in girls, who for at least the first semester of college, coordinate their clothing abd spend 25 minutes doing makeup and relocating individual strands of hair. By the time they graduate, they're curling out of bed 10 minutes before class, throwing on their "good" sweat pants and slamming together a pony tail.
3. The stupid questions -- Two days ago, The Frosh (see previous blog) leans over to me and says, "Do we have to ask to go to the bathroom, or just get up and go?" I, of course, said, "Dude, you can't leave the room under any circumstances. They take this stuff seriously in college."

Guys+Girls=Friends? Not really.

A girl I know told me she didn't understand why she couldn't seem to maintain friendships with guys. She said, at some point, the guy would want something more, she would reject him, and the friendship would basically end right there.
She was torn about this, wondering if there was something inherently unfriendly in her.
She was way overanalyzing it.
The answer, women, is this: Guys will never pursue friendships with girls. If a guy make an effort to talk to or spend time with a girl, he either has romantic feelings for her or wants to have sex with her. We are pretty satisfied with our male friends. We have to act differently around girls, and we don't want to do that unless we're getting something out of it.
For those reasons, girls just don't make good friends for men. We have to eliminate a minimum of 65 percent of our conversation topics when girls are around, we can't expell gas, we have to exhibit the most basic forms of civility. It sucks.
This is not to say we cannot have female friends. Guys will tolerate female friendships for the following reasons:
1. The girl is your buddy's girlfriend -- Often times, mixing girlfriends and bros is like mixing Al Franken and An Coulter, but if the girl is a relatively reasonable human being and doesn't require constant attention, we can be friends.
2. We're still in the interim period between meeting and, um, whatever is going to happen thereafter -- The interim can usually last no longer than a couple of months, at which point the guy will have either ruined it by being too pushy or have given up for lack of positive signs.
3. You've known eachother forever --If you went to grade school, junior high, heck, even high school together (assuming you saw eachother almost every day during that period), friendships are acceptable, although the girl should know that the guy is probably making a move on her at some point. In this case, rejection won't end the friendship.
4. The guy is gay -- This is a whole 'nother blog altogether.

The Truth about Sportswriting

Every time I tell somebody, particularly a man, what I do for a living -- I'm a sportswriter -- the reaction is almost always the same.
"Whoa, so you get into the game free and you get to meet the players and stuff?"
Don't get me wrong, the job has perks. I get paid to watch games. I get free food. But people who don't cover sports for a living don't understand the following:
1. The players aren't that cool. The majority of them are just as boring as you are, only they're rich and boring. You're just boring. Really, they're regular dudes who won the genetic lottery. Many of them spend 3-4 years on top of the world, then crash into personal disaster.
2. Covering a game is not like going to a game with your buddies. Sportswriters don't cheer or tailgate or drink. We show up an hour early and leave sometimes two hours late. We have to go into a locker room and try to coax interesting material from boring people who don't want to talk to us. We're on deadline pressure. Yes, it's better than laying brick. No, it does not pay better than laying brick.
3. Everybody associated with high-level athletics is lying. All the time. They're politicians. Everything they say is constructed to make themselves and the organization look good, which makes being a journalist very difficult. And it makes it impossible to be a fan of any team you cover. In fact, most sportswriters hate the teams they cover.
4. Sportswriters don't care who wins games. Really. Even guys who are covering their alma maters or the teams they grew up watching don't really care anymore. This applies to editors, too. Sports sections get incessant criticism for favoring one area high school or college over another. While this might happen, it has nothing to do with the teams the journalists like and everything to do with the teams who are a) accessible and b) interesting.
Sports journalists care about two things: 1) themselves and 2) getting a paper out in time to hit the bars. The outcome of a game is a necessary evil.
If it sounds like I'm bitching, it's because I am. Don't get me wrong, I like my job. I'm young enough I could get out if I hated it. But sportswriting is not what most people think it is.



Out.

Initial blog

Here it is.